


By Fading Lights

by Chibihaku



Series: Kalasin Lavellan [7]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Five And One, I despise tagging my own work, Minor depictions of bondage, NSFW, Punishment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 21:07:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4976551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chibihaku/pseuds/Chibihaku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Funny, wasn’t it, that it was only here, in the South, as a Tal Vashoth and about as far removed from that life as he could get while still being himself, that he is only just realising that there’s no Qunlat word for love.</p><p>((Or, five times Bull had sex with the Inquisitor, and one time he didn't.))</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Fading Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies in advance for this self-indulgent monster of a fic. It wasn't supposed to be anywhere near as long as it ended up being, or anywhere near as smutty.
> 
> It's also my first foray into publishing my more... *ahem* guilty pleasures (Read: first foray into publishing my smut), and after being a fanfic writer in various fandoms for over ten years, that's saying something. What have these two done to me?

The first time it happens, Bull is surprised.

After the ropes come off, the blindfold is untied, the Inquisitor is settled back in the bed, and everything is cleaned, he finds himself at the smallest of losses. Normally, he can read her like a book, but in that moment whatever knowledge she would give him is closed and fogged, and he delicately keeps the frown off his face as he looks at her. After a moment,  Bull sits on the edge of the bed and absently starts running his hand over her back, and she very quietly asks (in a voice still fogged and a little uncertain) if he could speak to her.

“What about?” He keeps petting her, because her muscles are relaxing under his hands.

She doesn’t want to look at him yet, but that’s not unusual. It takes some people a bit of time to get out of the play mindset and she hasn’t done this too many times before, and never with him. (She’s _done_ it before, but probably not with the most caring of people. There’s a scar or two there – she was marked before someone got a chance to show her how it’s supposed to happen.) She looks at the headboard, trying to find words to say what she wants to.

In the end; “It doesn’t matter. Just talk to me?”

So he does.

He strokes his hand down her back as he tells her about the surprising abundance of different ales available in the tavern, which one is his favourite (“the darkest one that’s made from the deep mushroom recipe but doesn’t actually use deep mushrooms – which is a relief like you wouldn’t believe, Boss.”) which one Krem hates with a passion (“the light one that tastes a little too close to mead, he’s like you and hates sweet things, you see. You’re both weird, it’s fucking good.”) and the drinking preferences of all the other  Chargers as well. At some point she rolls onto her side and faces him, looking at his chin because she can’t quite yet bring herself to look at his eyes, and his hand cups her hip, thumb rubbing over the bone.  At some point, he moves on to whiskey, argues the merits of the different malts as her hand comes up and rests on one of his scars, fingers tracing over it with the lightest little touch.

Eventually, she lifts her eyes to his and gives a small smile, heartbreakingly sweet, and he trails his fingers along her arm, to the hand that’s still resting on his chest and twines his fingers through hers.

And he keeps talking. He talks until she falls asleep, then he leaves her, distracting Leliana on the way because it’s now his place to care for her – if this series of events plays out the way he expects it to.

\---

Krem takes one look at him and laughs.

Then he buys him a drink.

\---

When she tells him that they need to talk, he doesn’t feel a thrill of fear or anything stupid like that. He can see a curiosity on her face and there’s a sense of intrigue in the way she’s standing. Even if those non-verbals weren’t there, it’s not like he hasn’t had the morning-after regret discussion before. People (mostly Andrastrian) who thought they knew what they were getting into, who enjoyed it at the time but felt dirty and sin-guilty afterwards were as common to him as mud. But she’s not one of those, not a chantry sister with her skirts hitched to her hips and her ass bare as she prays to an absent god and utters oaths into the Fade when he takes her from behind. She’s not a dirty little man with a dirty little secret, who likes to be fucked by men stronger and bigger, who turns around and runs back to their wife at the end of the day and pretends that he’s happy.

No, she’s an elf.

She’s a half-wild thing who grew up in a world far more dangerous than the pious cage that the Chantry forces its people to be thankful for. She’s a cat – as likely to claw as to be content, to bite when moments before she was placid. She’s proud as all elves are proud, though her pride presents itself in a lack of regret when she comes to him, and an almost punishable demand for more.

He presses her bodily against the wall, makes her gasp, makes her ask him again in a more pleasant tone, and when she fails to please him, he makes her _beg_ for it instead. He tosses her to her bed, ties her hands around the headboard, works her to the brink of orgasm and then holds her there, merciless in the pleasure he gives her until she’s nothing more than a babbling mess, his face in her cunt, her knees hooked over his horns.

When she’s no longer capable of speech, just a litany of sobbing “yespleaseBullmore _Creators_!” he pulls fully away from her. She moans at the loss of contact, hands clenching, arms straining against her restraints, trying to reach for him. Her pupils are blown wide where she’s looking at him; nipples peaked where her chest is heaving in ragged breaths. She whines, low pitched and soft, he runs a hand down the plane of her stomach, bringing it to rest just above the fine hairs between her legs.

“What do you say?” He asks, looking at the space between her spread legs with a pointed raised eyebrow. Her inner thighs are red from where his stubble has been scratching at them.

“Please,” The word is more a breath than anything else.

“Good girl.”

He slides up the bed then, leans over her, kisses her so she can taste herself in his mouth. He enters her in one swift stroke that fills her completely and leaves her moaning against his lips, has her back arching to press against him before he uses his weight to pin her down so she can’t move. Her hands twist against her bindings, her head thrashes away from his mouth as he takes her swift and hard. Her legs come around him, heels digging into his lower back.

“Next time I’ll tie them down too.” He purrs into her ear and her answer is a high, strained noise against his neck.

He moves to bite her – her neck, her breasts, anywhere he can reach while he’s inside her and she’s wrapped around him. As soon as his weight moves, she bucks up into him, selfish little creature that she is, and he puts a hand between them, holding her down so she can’t move.

She’s writhing and moaning again long before he’s finished with her, and when he comes, it’s hard, hot and sharp – he spills inside her and that causes her to cry out, clenching around him as her own pleasure crests.

After, he unties her, checks she’s okay, cleans them up and settles her more comfortably on her bed. He props himself up on his elbow next to her and runs a hand down her trembling form. When he looks at her face, she smiles reassuringly, but her eyes dart off to the left after a moment and he knows she can’t yet hold his gaze.

So he starts to talk.

He spends fifteen minutes talking about the different merits of bananas and how no-one can produce them in the south like the ones back home. The monologue wins a few small laughs from her at the right points, an exhausted giggle that warms his insides because he’s looked after her well if she can make that sound.

After he exhausts his opinions on bananas he moves on to the other fruits of the South, his fingers brushing as light as he can against her navel as he speaks. The South’s oranges aren’t tasty enough, he complains, they’re all sugar and no tang, the apples are more meal than crunch, but strawberries are good, and they don’t get them up north.

“I’m telling you, though, Boss; Koslun himself would sob if he knew I hadn’t had a mango in near ten years.”

“What’s a mango?” Her eyes are closed, and there’s a small smile on her face. At some point his fingers have moved from her stomach to her face, gently tracing over her valaslin.

He rolls onto his back, pulls her up onto him and settles her against him, now threading one hand through her hair. “You wouldn’t like them,” He tells her, all matter-of-fact, “They’re sweet and rich as anything. Best damn food in the world, but your strange hatred of sugar means you’d waste them.”

“I don’t dislike _all_ sweet things.”

“Only most of them.”

She rubs her face against his chest like a cat, “I think you’re just trying to keep them for yourself.”

“Go to sleep, Boss.”

She does, slowly, and he talks about fruit for 10 minutes more before her breathing fully evens out. Then he slides her off him gently, back to the bed proper, and he quietly pads out of the room.

\----

Two weeks later, there’s a box on his bed that contains a note that just says, “You’re right. They’re _demon fruit._ ” He frowns at the note, picks it out from the box and blinks. Underneath it is a mango - overripe and nearly spoilt, small and nearly all skin. He laughs for a good five minutes when he sees it.

\---

He learns very quickly that while she loves to submit, she loves to be _made_ to submit even more, and that she walks a very fine line between slightly-wilful obedience and behaviour that might piss someone else off. More than once he’s forced to push her down, move her hands, or speak sharply to get her to do what he wants her to do, but in the end she always, always submits.

It still surprises the both of them the night she actually disobeys.

Her hips are up in the air, and his hand is on the back of her neck, holding her down but not pressing, more of a warning than anything. One of the fingers of his other hand is buried to the knuckle inside her, and he’s languidly stroking as she squirms. She’s not restrained tonight, her hands are clenching in the sheets either side of her head, knuckles white with strain. He’s told her not to move, she’s rigid with the effort it’s taking her.

Everything else aside, she’s an impatient lover. The gentle pace is driving her mad, he knows, she loves it hard and fast and rough, and recently he’s taken to tormenting her dropping a few gears, teasing her with a slow drag that never fails to turn her into a sullen puddle of desperation.

(She always appreciates him so much more when he finally relents and speeds up, however.)

“Please, Bull,” She sighs into the pillow, her sweat-slicked hair catching at the corner of her mouth, “ _Please_.”

“Not yet, Boss,” He says, stroking his finger inside her just once to watch her twitch and hear her moan.

Oh, he’s hard as a rock behind her, of course he is, because her voice does things to him that he’d rather not think about too hard, (heh. Hard.) But he’s also a patient, patient man.

He slides his finger nearly out of her, then pushes it in again slow and as deep as it can go, his other thumb rubbing languidly on the back of her neck.

A small tensing of her shoulders is the only warning he gets. She moves sharply, suddenly, he tightens his hand on her neck as she tries to twist out from under him, bucking as hard as she can on his finger.

He snarls, pulls his hands away from her and steps back.

Immediately, she knows she’s done wrong – he can tell by the way she turns to look over her shoulder, eyes wide and repentant, hands loosening in their death grip on the sheets.

“Sit up.” He says, his voice deliberately cold and hard.

She whimpers and does so, breasts still heaving with little gasping breaths. She’s the picture of meek repentance now and he steels himself against a strange urge to reach out and touch her.

She’s done wrong, after all. He has to make sure she knows it so that he can look after her better in the future.

Still, he spends a moment licking the taste of her off his fingers, and when she sees what she’s doing, some of her nerves relax a fraction. It’s going to be her first punishment and it’s going to hurt.

It’s going to hurt a lot less if she’s calm about it. Knowing her, it’ll probably even be a good pain if she’s calm about it.

“You disobeyed, Boss.” He says at last.

She cringes a little. Nods.

She doesn’t speak, probably because he hasn’t said that she’s allowed to.

He gives her a patient sigh and takes a step back towards the bed. “You got impatient.” He says, quietly, “You didn’t follow instructions.”

She’s looking at the bedsheets instead of at his face.

“Look at me, Boss.”

She does, her eyes flicking away once, before she hardens her resolve and meets his eye. He rewards her with the smallest twitch of his lips, reaches out and cups her face. She leans into the touch almost absently.

“You’re being repentant now,” He tells her, “So I know you can be good when you choose to be.”

His thumb strokes across her vallaslin. “I still have to punish you for being disobedient,” he says, softly, “Do you understand?”

She nods and doesn’t look away.

“Good girl. Get on your hands and knees for me.”

He pulls his hand away from her face and steps back so she can comply. She does so quickly, skin still glistening with drying sweat in the low light. He runs his fingertips along the line of her spine almost leisurely.

She shudders.

“I’m going to spank you ten times,” He purrs to her. She sucks in a long breath, back arching under his fingers as he runs them down her spine again. “You’re going to count them. Out loud. If you miss a count or stumble, I add five more. Do you understand, Boss?”

Her head moves in a minute jerk that might be a nod, but he needs to be sure.

“Out loud, please.”

“Yes.” Her voice is caught somewhere between a whimper and a hiss, layered with something husky and honey sweet. It’s a promising combination – they’ve talked about the possibility of this happening, but she’d never had it done to her before. That she’s still a little turned on is good – it’ll relax her, make this experience better, maybe make it even something that she enjoys.

You never know if you truly _like_ this part until it happens the first time, after all.

“Good girl.”

He lifts his hand and slaps her ass, the sort of open-handed action that stings like a bitch but doesn’t do lasting harm.

She yelps, her hands clench in her sheets.

It takes her a moment, but he’s patient – this is her first time. He needs to know if she can –

“One.” She says, in a voice that’s going to sweeten his dreams later. It’s pained, of course, but also intrigued and it has a little bit of _want_ simmering under it. He smirks behind her, safe in that she won’t be able to see it.

Promising start, indeed.

He rubs his fingers over the mark, she hisses in a breath that comes out long and shuddering.

He raises his hand and quickly slaps another spot, enjoys the way her dark skin goes red from his touch.

“Two.” This time, her voice is definitely lined with want.

He keeps going, never hits the same spot twice in succession, and she counts every stroke, her voice becoming a breathy keen by the time she gets to ten.

At the last stroke, her arms give out and she has to catch herself on her elbows before she faceplants into the mattress. A fine tremor of need and something that he thinks might be confusion is running over her shoulders and down her spine, and as he watches her he feels a slight trace of a frown coming to his face. She makes a strange sort of noise, he can’t quite tell what it is, but it’s full of desire and laced with uncertainty.

He moves to sit near her shoulders, with his legs spread because he’s still fucking _hard as Hell_ , but something’s not right and she matters more than his dick right now.

 _Yes, she does_. He tells his dick when it throbs in protest of the sentiment.

He puts his hand between her shoulder blades and she flinches slightly. He leaves his hand there, lets her get used to it, then slowly moves to stroke the base of her neck until the fine tremors running over her pass.

When she finally gets her shaking under control, he moves his hand to her chin, so he can tip her face and look at her, so he can see exactly what’s wrong.

Her pupils are blown wide with arousal and she’s panting slightly, sweet little breaths that make his dick twitch, but her brows are drawn tight together and her muscles are tensing the longer he looks at her, kind of like she’s bracing herself for something.

 _She’s turned on_ , he realises finally, _but she’s not sure that she wants to be._

He lets his hand wander so he’s cupping her cheek, thumbs at the side of her lips. She leans into his hand with another of those small, strange noises.

“You did good, Boss.” He tells her, quietly, like he’s talking to a frightened cat, “You did so damn good.”

Her lip twitches in a tiny smile, but the crease between her brow doesn’t smooth in the least.

“I’ve got a question for you,” He continues in the same soft voice, “It’s important and you need to tell me the truth and _not_ what you think I want to hear.”

Her eyes flash down and to the left. He shifts so that he can get eye contact with her again.

When she’s looking at him (she’s frowning slightly, but she’s looking, so he’ll take it as a win) he asks the question.

“Do you want to stop?”

It’s the sort of thing that really should be watch-worded. It’s also the sort of thing she’s still got too much pride _to_ watch-word. You can’t be a good pet if you’re too emotionally confused to know if you really want what you’re being given, and he can’t be a good master if he can’t trust where her head’s at.

_I’m gonna have to talk to her about that, but not right now._

The frown on her face grows more prominent, but something that’s a little like relief flicks across her eyes and in that expression he has his answer. He still needs to hear it from her though, so he waits.

“I..” She starts, eyes darting to the left again.

“I said honestly, Boss.” He cuts over her, “I’m not gonna get offended.”

She swallows, looks back at him, hesitates. “…Yes.”

He smiles at her, “Then we stop.” He thumbs her lip again, “If you need to think about this a bit, we’ll talk about it later. I don’t want to do anything to you that you don’t want me to do.”

She pulls herself up so that she’s balancing on her knees. He lets his hand trail down her arm so that he can thread his fingers through hers on the bed.

“You really mean that, don’t you?” There’s disbelief colouring her tone, not about what he’s saying, he knows, more like she can’t quite get her head around the idea behind it.

"Course I do." He says, "I mean, not that I don't _want_ to keep going, but if you're done, you're done."

She ducks her head and gives a weak laugh, then looks over to where he’s still very obviously aroused.

“D’you want me to – ”

“It’ll go away on its own.” He tells her, blunt but not unkind. Then he grins and adds, “And if I need a few moments alone? Well, let’s just say I’ve got a new memory to speed things up a little.” He leans forward into her space, proud of her when she doesn’t pull away. He kisses her cheek, then brushes his lips up to her ear, “If the Chantry heard your voice before, Boss,” He purrs, “They would have made it a sin on the spot.”

He pulls back and she’s blushing a little, but she’s also smiling in the way she does when she’s pleased but can’t quite work out if she actually wants to be.

“I thought the Herald of Andraste was above sin?”

“They’d like to believe that.” He tells her, “But then, they’d also like to believe that a dalish elf would willingly give up her own religion to practice theirs. They’re not the smartest bunch.”

“Is that blasphemous?”

He shrugs, “I figure we’d be the last two people to know if it was.”

She laughs at this, a real laugh – one that’s free of jittering nerves and uncertainty. He grins at her, strangely proud of himself for being the one to get her to make the noise. He presses his nose to the side of her head and kisses her temple just once. “Lie down on the bed,” He says, “I’m gonna get something for your ass.”

She does so, the last remnants of her arousal making her shiver at his proximity. She spreads out over as much of the bed as her small frame can, then props herself up onto her elbows to watch him as he moves about the room.

Walking is uncomfortable at first, but his erection slowly fades as he gets a tin of elfroot balm out of the pants he threw in the corner earlier. By the time he wanders back to her, he’s nearly flaccid again, and he takes his seat on the edge of the bed with a Hell of a lot more comfort than before. He takes some of the ointment and rubs it on her ass, watching the play of shifting muscles in her back as the balm starts to soothe her.

Once he’s finished with her ass, he moves his hands up her back, gently kneading muscles and pressing out any of the knots he finds. She rewards him with a pleased little moan for his efforts and he grins at her back, feeling her slowly becoming boneless under his fingers as he words. It’s only when she’s completely relaxed that he starts to talk to her.

“Y’know, Dalish was running away from something when I found her.” He pushes his fingers into a hefty knot between her shoulder blades – she whines, squirms a little under his fingers, then sighs in relief when it snaps and he rubs the sore muscles out. “She never told me what she was running away from, but I always figured that ‘three mages per clan’ thing was a little bit of bullshit.”

“It is.” The Boss confirms under his hands – her voice is sleepy and relaxed where it had been strained before, “We always try to find mages a new clan to go to if there’s already three in a clan.” She folds her arms in front of her and rests her chin on them, head pointed to the headboard. If he looked, he’s pretty sure he’d find her eyes closed. “Elven magic is rarer than human magic, but the humans always look at our clans and the fact there’s only three mages and assume the worst.”

“But some mages do get cast out.” Bull says, moving his fingers to her shoulders.

“Sometimes.” She agrees, “Some parents are afraid that their child isn’t strong enough to resist demons, so they tell the child to run before the Keeper finds out that they’re a mage.”

“Ever happen in your clan?”

At some point, his massage had turned into more of a gentle petting, she’s unconsciously pressing back into his hand, so he lightly run his nails over her back.

“Once, while I’ve been there.” She admits, “The Keeper was furious. Said that it was a Keeper’s place to decide the danger of a mage. By the time we were able to mount a proper hunt for the poor boy to try and bring him home, the shemlen had found him and locked him away in one of their Circle towers.”

“Poor kid.”

She makes a quiet sound that’s half-asleep and might be an agreement.

“Dalish is too old for that, though.” Bull says after a time, “Did the maths a bit ago. She said she’d just come into her magic and had been cast out a month before she found me, but if elven mages are anything like sarebaas, that’s impossible.”

“Magic does seem pretty constant across the races.”

“Well, except for dwarves.”

“They’re just weird, though.”

He chuckles, shifting so that he can run his hand up from the base of her neck through her hair. She shivers, so he does it again with a grin. He nearly laughs outright at the small noise of complaint she makes as he settles his hand on the back of her neck once more.

“So Dalish probably wasn’t cast out of her clan for magic, then.” He confirms, just for something to talk about.

“Not magic, no.” The Boss agrees, “But she could have left for another reason like –” She cuts off mid word. Her back stiffens. She’s suddenly wide awake again, and wary.

 _Like you._ Bull finishes in his head. Sent away from her clan for a bit of espionage work and then suddenly finding that she was no longer allowed to go back home.

“Yeah, I suppose she could be.” He tells her, “But she could be a royal from some forgotten kingdom like Grim.”

“The dalish don’t have kingdoms,” The Boss says through her sudden, surprised laughter.

“A princess,” Bull continues, like she hasn’t interrupted, “Who refuses to come into her birth-right, who ran away because they wanted her to marry some human asshole so their clan could merge with the city.”

The Boss snorts, it’s an inelegant sound. “That’s completely ridiculous.”

“Quiet - I’m just getting to the good part.”

\---

They talk about punishments a week later, after the Boss’ had time to think about it a bit. She says she’s willing to try again and there’s even a hint of hunger in her voice when she says it.

So the next time she disobeys, he ties her to a bedpost and gives her a punishment of three lashes.

It turns her on even more than he expected it would and, afterwards, they continue on without a hiccup.

\---

They’ve killed a dragon.

They’ve killed a dragon and it’s probably the most sexually charged experience Bull’s ever had. The Boss had moved like lightning through the battle, ducking and weaving around the monster’s legs, face set into a permanent snarl of defiance and determination. Sera did her part in the fight by keeping the creature peppered with arrows from afar, while Vivienne had shot ice spell after ice spell at the beast, attempting to freeze as much of it in place as she could.

Bull – well, he was struck by the dragon’s tail pretty early in the piece, but after he’d picked himself up out of the splintered remains of a tree he’d got in a few good slashes at the creature’s belly, bloodying it up just enough that it gave him its full attention.

It roared, swung it’s head around. He had enough time to think _This is it, this is how I die._ And then it opened its maw to blow out a gout of flame.

And the boss had suddenly _been there_ and she’d jumped onto the back of the creature’s lowered head and buried her daggers into its skull just above its eye ridges to the _hilt_ , snarling like an enraged animal the whole time.

And Bull had stared, dumbstruck for possibly the first time in his life, as the light faded from the beasts eyes and he felt his heart swell three sizes in his chest.

Shit. _Taarsidath-an halsaam._ He’d _definitely_ be thinking of that moment for a long time to come.

He poured himself another drink where he sat at the bar of the tavern, throwing it back in one shot and coughing at the burn that raced down his throat.

He’s elated, he’s heady with power, and he’s _very_ concerned about the thought that flashed through his head as the Boss pulled her blades out of the dragons skull and looked at him with eyes wide and feral, chest heaving, rage-scream dying on her lips. And then she looked at him and grinned and the start of a hysterical giggle spilled out of her chest.

_I love you._

He swears very quietly to himself and takes another swig of his drink. He’s close to abandoning the tankard completely and just chugging the shit out of the bottle.

Qunari, _real_ qunari, _proper_ qunari – they don’t do love. They fuck like everyone does, but love is one of those things you’re supposed to avoid at all costs. Love makes you put an individual above the team, put a person above the qun. People who love make stupid decisions, can’t form clear judgements about things like what constitutes as _reasonable losses._

He knows more than enough about that last one. He’s Tal Vashoth and the Chargers are still alive because he cared more about them than he did about his own people. What will he be like if he throws _love_ into the mix?

He looks into the bottom of his tankard and doesn’t find any answers. Maybe if he fills it again, he will.

Worth a shot, at least.

For some reason, as he throws back the drink he finds himself thinking of his tama. She told him once, when he was still just an imekari, that if you want to understand a culture the first place you need to look is at their language. Language tells you a lot about people – what they value, what they consider taboo, what they don’t consider at all. It tells you how much stock they put on religion, how much they blaspheme, how much they value the individual as opposed to the group. When he was young it used to frustrate him to no end that the Common tongue only had one word for duty instead of as many as Qunlat did, but as he grew older he started to see it more as a comparison between his own culture and the one he was growing to know.

When he’d just started out as a Ben Hassrath, he found it strange that people would try to leave the qun together, to give up everything they knew for another person. He didn’t understand the connection, brought so many people back because it was his _duty_. It was the right thing to do. It was what the qun demanded of him.

And then he’d reached Seheron and it’d been his home for ten years, surrounded by friends – warriors all, soldiers and liars to the last. Sure, there’d been one or two that had been close enough to that he’d even have called them friend, one or two that he cared for like the imekari that he’d grown up with.

And there’d been one that had died.

One who he avenged.

That day, he’d almost understood why people went Tal Vashoth and it had terrified him enough that he’d requested re-education and had found himself re-posted to the South.

Funny, wasn’t it, that it was only here, in the South, _as_ a Tal Vashoth and about as far removed from that life as he could get while still being himself, that he is only just realising that there’s no Qunlat word for _love._

Some sense makes him look up then, up from the bottom of his tankard, over to the door of the tavern. She’s standing there, staring at his normal, empty chair with a twinge of disappointment on her lips. He sees her, furious, victorious, over a dragon for a moment, before he chases his melancholy down with the dregs in his tankard and calls out to her.

Her face lights like the sun when she sees him. It’s almost too bright to look at. He pours her a drink, prods her about slaying a dragon, turns his sullen mood into a celebration at the look of badly-concealed pleasure she gives him when he talks about dragons and their place in qunari culture.

And time passes and he’s drunk and she’s drunk too, and that’s his excuse for what his mouth tries to say next before his brain catches up with him.

“Hey, Kadan;”

 _Shit!_ Screams his mind, slamming the breaks on the way his mouth wants the conversation to go, _Shit!_

She looks at him like he hung the moon and his mouth very nearly gets its way. Three little words, would it really be so hard to say three little words?

_I love you._

“You have _fantastic_ tits.”

A blush rises to her cheeks and she smiles at him, and after that he pours them both another drink and things get a bit disjointed.

Later, he’ll remember that at one point their heads are close together and they’re talking in what they _think_ is a whisper but is probably loud enough for the whole tavern to hear them. He’ll remember that his hand slowly creeps up her thigh under the bar, that his fingers thrum against her leg in an inconstant beat that should be a contradiction but isn’t.

He’ll remember, hazy, that at one point she could have asked him about how qunari show they care for people, but he won’t quite be sure that she did, and won’t remember what he says to her in response.

He’ll remember that he gets them up and moving, and that he makes it to his room, barely, before he grabs her and pushes her against the nearest wall.

Her mewl into his mouth when he kisses her will be clear as day to him, along with the way she tastes faintly of maras-lok and _her, her, her,_ Boss, no, _Kadan_ –

He growls, picks her up, drags her legs around him. She reaches up and grips the base of his horns, blunt nails biting into the place where they turn from horn to skin and –

He grunts, presses the hand not holding her up to her breast, squeezes. She gasps, mouth coming away from his as she bares her throat to him, he presses his lips to the tip of her ear, sucks it into his mouth, runs his teeth and tongue over the curves and dips he finds there. She cries out, arches into him, her hands tightening their grip.

He drags his hands down her body – they’re both a little too drunk for anything like finesse and his hand finds the hem of her shirt, pushing it up and back so he can dig his fingers into the planed muscles of her stomach. She bucks, pleasure spikes behind his eye.

“Bull,” She begs, rocking against him, “ _Bull._ ”

He pulls away from her ear, presses his nose to the side of her head as his hand slips lower to the fastening of her pants.

_I love you._

He slips his hand into her pants and cups her, growling at how wet she is already, even as she moans against his neck and says his name once more. Her breath sends little shivers down his back that pool in his dick and he’s straining against his pants with _want you, need you, love you –_

He gets her off like that – hard, fast, dirty. One hand holding her up and the other in her pants, two fingers inside her and his thumb swiping against her clit in time with the way she writhes against him. He growls into her hair when her teeth scrape against his neck, moans when she comes with a sudden, sharp cry of his name.

_I love you. I love you, Iloveyou._

He pulls his fingers out of her and fumbles with his own belt, freeing his pulsing cock and taking her in one swift movement. She cries out, throws her head back, there’s a dull thump when she hits the wall. They both freeze.

He waits a beat before he kisses her neck in a query; she laughs breathlessly against his forehead before she nips him and clenches her legs more tightly around his middle.

So he moves.

He growls and bites and kisses and grunts, she says his name like a prayer and he moves faster, deeper, harder. She’s slick and hot around him, he’s buried to his balls,pulling nearly out and slamming back into her with every thrust.

“Bull,” She moans, “Bull, _ma vehn-”_

He shifts his angle and the rest of the word is lost in her cry as his free hand drags her closer to him, pulls her tighter, pushes her down further onto him. She buries her face into his neck and sobs when she comes a second time, the rhythmic clenching around him making him grunt as he loses himself to his own pleasure.

He holds them both up as long as he can, but his knees slowly give out and they slide down the wall to puddle on the floor. She’s in his lap with her legs still around him, he’s still inside her and softening, but not quite willing to pull out of her just yet.

He kisses her hair and slides his fingers over the parts of her that he can reach, she slowly lets go of his horns to wrap her hands about his neck, her own fingers tracing the shell of one of his ears. He kisses her languidly, once, twice, moves to her broken nose, her vallaslin, the scar just above her lip.

_I love you._

She turns her nose to him, chases his lips with her own, and they trade small affections for longer than he normally allows, before he finally slides her off him and stands. He pulls her up with him, supporting her weight when she stumbles a little. He gets them both to his bed and finally undressed, somehow gets the sheets pulled down and arranges her on top of him as best he can when they’re both drunk and she’s not helping all that much.

“D’you feel better?” She asks, in a voice that’s half asleep, and he hisses in a breath and blinks down at the top of her head.

Then, he chuckles. “I’m supposed to be the one who looks after you.” He tells her, and she smiles against him. She drums her fingers against one of the scars on his chest and doesn’t say anything more.

He grins at her with more fondness than he ever felt himself capable of, and starts recounting their fight against the dragon to her, even as sleep steals his voice away before he manages to tell her just exactly how hot she looked when she was fighting.

\---

He dreams of her, and of the qun calling his name.

Someone asks him to choose between the Chargers and a qunari dreadnaught. He blows a horn, seals the fate of good people while he saves the ones that he knows.

He’s not a good qunari. She tells him he’s a good man.

\---

He wakes in the middle of the night to a spike of pain in his ankle.

At first, he doesn’t quite know what the weight next to him is, then he remembers. They went to his room, not hers, and she wouldn’t be one to leave him in the night like he always does. His ankle gives another angry throb and he clenches his teeth and shuts his eye against it, trying not to make any sound that might wake his sleeping bedmate.

He stands and limps over to the side of the room, where his elfroot balm is waiting for him in the same small tin he used the other day on her, then he walks back to the bed and sits on the very edge of it, pulling his foot up next to him so that he can work.

The balm takes effect in moments, cool and soothing cream numbing the pain and relaxing the cramped and protesting muscles. He sighs soundlessly, rubbing the joint and pressing his fingers into the tendons and scars. He’s too focused on being quiet  so he doesn’t hear the bed shift behind him but he definitely feels the small hand that slides over his shoulder blade and up around to his clavicle. He also feels the gentle press of lips against an old knot of scar tissue near his neck on the other side.

He tilts his head.

The Boss’ eyes flash green in the dark. He reacts much better than he did the first time he saw elf eyes do that, in that he doesn’t react at all. He smirks at her and raises the hand not on his ankle up so he can cover hers, and she smiles and shifts closer to him, pressing herself to his back.

“You should go back to sleep, Boss.”

“I’m not quite tired.” She says, contrary for the sake of it, kissing the scar again. He could make it an order if he wanted to and then she’d have to obey - but he doesn’t really want to at the moment.

The cool balm is now starting to warm on his ankle, and it’s an extra relief to the numbness.  She, too, is a long line of warmth against his back and he’s less aware than he normally is of how drafty his room can be late at night when there’s a warm body pressed against his own.

She nips at the scar then and he shivers slightly before he raises his eyebrow at her.

She turns owlish, faux innocent eyes on him and nips him again, her expression belied by the sly tilt of her mouth and the way the fingers of the hand he isn’t holding are creeping around to his stomach, pressing ever-so lightly, but also enough to let him know they’re there. When he doesn’t react, her nails scratch across his skin, her tongue slides across one of his scars and she meets his eye in a silent question.

_Will you allow this?_

He grins. Honestly, he’s more curious as to what she has in mind than anything else. He lets his foot fall off the bed as she kisses up the side of his neck, her fingers sliding over his nipple in the softest, most barely-there of touches. He threads the fingers of her other hand through his own as she moves to mouth at his jawline, working her way up to his ear.  Her breasts are pressed full against his back, shifting slightly when she moves, making him very much aware of where they are.

She bites the spot just under his ear, a tiny little scrape of teeth that’s just enough for him to feel it, and his cock stirs slightly in a new sort of interest. She tugs the hand he’s holding, he lets go, settling it back on the bed as she moves both her hands to his shoulders.

She slips around him, trailing her fingers over the top of his back as she goes, stands before him completely naked and unashamed.

He tilts his head, trails his eye up and down her body and spreads his legs just a little in invitation.

“What are you going to do, Kadan?” He asks, even though he already knows from the way she moves into his space, trailing her fingers over the parts of him that she can reach. He’s decided he likes this game, he’s going to let her keep playing it, but the rules are going to be his.

She lowers her eyes and peers at him through her lashes, trailing her fingers down his chest.

“I’m going to suck you off.” She says, and he nearly laughs at the words coming out of her (normally so polite) mouth.

He reaches one hand out and grabs her hip, dragging her forward. She gasps, stumbles, catches herself on his shoulders and looks him directly in the eye.

“Better get to it, then.” He growls as heat starts to pool in his gut from the way she’s looking at him. Her eyes are dark and hooded, her mouth set into a Cheshire smile, her hair falling artlessly across her face, mussed from sleep and still somehow the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

This time, when his heart beats against his ribs it’s not something that he can bring himself to be wary of, to try and regret. This time, it feels right.

She kisses his mouth once, almost chaste, then kisses his chin, his neck, his collarbone. Then, her teeth scrape against his sternum and she shifts to kneel between his legs. His cock brushes against her breasts as she keeps moving downwards, blunt little teeth and soft little lips are soon joined by slender little hands that drag across his stomach, leaving muscles twitching and jumping in their wake.

She spends time at his navel, swirling her tongue into it, holding herself back and pretending to a sort of patience that he knows she doesn’t have. He reaches out, wraps her hair tightly around one hand and tugs so that she’s looking up at him.

There’s a sort of devotion on her face that he’s not used to seeing directed at him. Oh, he’s used to lust, used to _need_ , used to want, but not to the queer mix of emotions that are playing on her face as she lets out a hiss at the sharp tug of his hand in her hair.

“You’re testing my patience, Kadan.”

He sees the frown that is her trying to work out why his name for her changed, but he doesn’t let her process it, instead pushes on the back of her head and she moves, tongue darting out to swipe at the head of his cock, sending another lazy bolt of pleasure through him. She wraps one of her hands around the base of him and squeezes lightly, before she brings her lips around him and swallows as much of him down as she can.

He swears, low, under his breath at the _feel_ of her mouth, damp and hot and _good_ and his hand tightens on her hair and then she _moans_ and it vibrates through him, right to his very core.

He says something then, it might have been her name, it might have been a prayer. Hell, it might have even been both, and she lightly grazes her teeth along him as she slides up again, follows this with pressing the flat of her tongue against the underside of him.

She knows what she’s doing, and from the noises she’s making, she’s enjoying herself immensely.

And for once, he lets himself go.

He loses himself in the feel of her around him, in the fact the hand in her hair is controlling how fast she goes by how hard he grips, lets himself buck, just a little, trusting that she’ll be able to pull away from him as she needs to. Before long, sparks start shooting behind his eyes as she presses harder with her tongue, sucks him deep into her mouth and swallows around him. He groans, she twists her fingers around him in a deft motion that has his head lolling back. She keeps moving, always following the silent directions of his hand on the back of her head, and he loves every damn minute of it.

He’s almost ashamed of how quickly he comes with her mouth hot on him, and though he does warn her when it’s about to happen, he’s also got his hand on the back of her head very firmly holding her _down._

She hums around him and it does him in – white flashes across his vision as he loses himself in pleasure, the throbbing of his dick, the feel of her lips around him, the way she keeps on sucking even when he’s finished, even when he’s starting to get too sensitive, before she finally, slowly pulls away from him with a lidded stare and a truly smug grin on her face.

Her tongue darts out and catches a drop of come on her lips that she hadn’t quite been able to swallow.

He tugs her up into his lap and she wraps her arms about his neck and kissing him languidly as she does so. She tastes of him, and it’s hot as _fuck_ , and more than anything he wants her, like this with him forever.

_If this is love, the qunari don’t know what the fuck they’re missing out on._

She doesn’t look like she wants him to return the favour, but the polite thing to do is ask, so he raises an eyebrow at her when she pulls away from the kiss.

She laughs and shakes her head lightly. She leans in, and he feels her words more than hears them when she says, “Thank you for the offer, though.”

“It’s rude not to ask.”

“Does this mean it’s my turn to talk to you?”

He grins against her mouth, kisses her languidly and leans back into the bed pulling her down on top of him. “Nah, I’m good.”

She settles herself against him.

“But now I know that you do _that_ in the middle of the night, I’m gonna have to start to stay after.”

He doesn’t know if she says something in response, because he’s already drifting off to sleep, feeling more relaxed and content than he has in years.

Somewhere in his dreams, he realises that she’s the reason for that.

\---

(He ends up paying her back, with interest, once they’ve both gotten over their hangovers the next morning. Afterwards they end up talking about _cheese_ of all things, laughing and kissing and talking and talking and _talking_ , and in the end she has to quickly throw on her clothes from the night before and run to a meeting that started fifteen minutes before she notices that she’s late.

He watches her go with a soft smile that he’s glad no-one else can see, because that means he doesn’t have to hide it.)

\---

Halamshiral is the sort of very special mess that Bull hates to deal with.

Everyone’s in everyone else’s pocket, everyone has some dirt on someone else, everyone’s trying to play one giant fucking game of “I know something you don’t” while they’ve got their hands down the front of each other’s skirts trying to pretend that they’re all not just hate-fucking.  

He’s worked for about half of the people in here and refused offers from the other half because they weren’t paying enough. Sera’s right, they’re a bunch of racist pricks and assholes, and the only thing good about them is the food.

Vivienne lays a (unnecessary) warning hand on his arm as someone says to the Boss that she’s ‘strangely beautiful, for a rabbit.’ He knows he has to watch himself here, but it still makes him furious the way the Boss laughs with a little titter that sounds authentic but Bull knows definitely isn’t.

She doesn’t laugh like that when she means it.

She says something back, something that sounds like a compliment that the woman will work out in a few hours’ time was actually an insult.

It doesn’t matter to these people, not really, that they’ve saved the Empress’ life. What’s more interesting to them is the deposition of Florianne and the scandal of Gaspard, and the way that the Empress’ hand clenched around that of her mistress elf when she was giving her speech when all was said and done. They’re more interested in working out how many rungs off the ladder they’ve been shifted, how this game affects theirs, what new allegiances they’d have to form to get themselves favour for the next ten minutes.

Dick-licking, power-grabbing _assholes_ the lot of them.

“You’re growling, dear. Try not to, it’s scaring the other guests.”

Shit, he is. He looks at Vivienne who gives him the smallest knowing smile before she moves away, turning to greet a courtier with a sincerity that seems so real it just has to be faked.

He folds his hands across his chest and forces his expression to impassiveness, looking out over the room. At least under the qun there’s none of this politicking _bullshit._ You know your place and you stay in it, you don’t try to move around.

Shit, but being Tal Vashoth is hurting him tonight.

All these people who are trying to get a leg up on everyone else. People who can’t trust anyone else. People who _mess with him_ because they think it’s funny and don’t realise under his blank expression that the first thing he did when he looked at them was plot out three different ways to kill them – not out of any sort of hate or antipathy, no, just because it’s what he trained for most of his life to do.

He’s a soldier. He’s a liar. He’s –

_Not Hissrad anymore._

The voice his mind gives him sounds like the Boss, gentle and soothing. He feels his shoulders relax a fraction, he resists the urge to press his fingers to the bridge of his nose. He moves to find the Inquisitor, she’s disappeared somewhere while he was caught up in his demons. As he moves, he doesn’t try and make himself small – he wouldn’t be able to do it here anyway, and these people would see it more as a sign of weakness than of strength. They move around him as he walks, parting like a gilded sea.

He sees the Inquisitor as she steps out onto a balcony and moves in that direction – arriving in time to watch a black-haired woman leave. He steps back to let the woman pass, (Mage, heavy robe would be cumbersome. Strike low and hard, looks like she can cast without a staff, though. Feint, dodge, neck-snap?) and seeing the Boss when he steps out on that balcony, even just her back, is like – is like –

Shit, what did the Empress say when she was being facetious?

 _Like a cool breeze on a Summer’s day._ His Inquisitor voice singsongs.

Not like that.

He moves, rests his hand on her back simply to touch her, and she leans into him as she looks out over the sweeping gardens of the palace.

 _This place used to belong to the elves_. He remembers, suddenly, and wonders what it must be doing to her to see it like this, with the blackened shell of the Alienage that they’d ridden past on the way here, when she’d closed her eyes and swallowed harshly and tucked herself behind an invisible wall before she opened her eyes again.

When the Empress had asked her what she’d thought of the place and she’d very politely and very pointedly answered that “Words cannot do it justice.” In a tone that pretended like she was giving the woman a compliment.

He jokes about the food to her, in case she wants to pretend there’s a reason for him coming to see her that isn’t just that he _wanted to see her._ And he’s a little disappointed but not all that surprised when she refuses his offer to dance.

“Just… stay here.” She says quietly, “With me.”

He wraps his arms around her and buries his nose in her hair, breathing in the smell of her – slightly stale sweat from fighting, but still always her, her, her – sharp and sweet and alive, even if they’re both so incredibly world-weary right now.

“Seheron was like this,” He says, after a time, “Well, not exactly the same but –”

“No-one could trust anyone else.” She finishes.

“Yeah.”

Underneath the shitty uniform he’s been made to wear, the dragon tooth she gave him rests against his chest.

“I had to kill one of my men, once,” Bull tells her, “Shitty little brat of a kid fresh from Par Vollen. He was gonna sell our secrets to the fog warriors. We would’ve pulled through just fine, but a whole lot of innocent people would’ve gotten hurt if I didn’t stop him before he did it.”

She presses her head back against his chest. The dragon tooth slides a bit where her head moves it.

“He was only fifteen years old.” Bull says, “His favourite food was banana drizzled in honey. He had a sweet tooth like you wouldn’t believe and had shit sword form. I was training him on the side but he was a lazy shit – wasn’t willing to put in the work.”

Her hand finds his and squeezes.

“He was gonna sell us out because he thought it’d end the fighting. He thought if he did what he did, the Fog Warriors would be able to claim the island proper and everyone could just go home.”

“Sounds like a teenager to me.”

Bull remembered the ruthlessness with which he’d struck the blow. One quick strike in the back streets late at night with a sword that wasn’t his usual so he could blame the attack on Tal Vashoth and get his men riled up to fight when they found the body the next day. At that point he’d been in Seheron for nearly four years.

It hadn’t been a clean kill. The kid had moved at the last minute and a cut that would have severed his spine struck his artery instead.

Bull had watched impassively as the boy had bled out, crying for his tama.

“Sometimes, you need to bury yourself to get shit done, Kadan.” He says, “But that doesn’t mean it changes who you are when you dig yourself out again.”

“How long can you stay buried before you lose yourself, Bull?” She asks him softly, looking out over the gardens and their illusion of peace and tranquillity. “How long can you bury that piece of yourself until you forget where to look for it again?”

Bull sighs.

“Killing that boy saved people,” He says, “No fog warriors came to the town we were in the next day. No innocent civilians died because of some idiot kid’s fool plan.” His boys had fought harder and faster the next time they found a nest of Tal Vashoth because they thought they were getting revenge. None of his people died on that mission.

“You regret it.” She says softly.

“It was necessary.”

“But you regret it.”

“I do.”

She turns in his arms and tugs slightly on his top. He leans down so that he can kiss her and he thinks that she understands.

She saved him, that day on the beach when she made him choose his men. She saved him and she doesn’t even know that she did it.

She’s still saving him now, even as he’s saving her, even as his arms come around her and he pulls her closer, lets her know that the choices she made tonight were difficult and went against every fibre of her being and by no means change who she is. She’s saving him by showing him that this worthless Tal Vashoth, this worthless mercenary isn’t so worthless after all.

He looks after her. She looks after him.

And maybe, just maybe –

They’ll be alright.


End file.
